1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for reproducing a recorded picture and more particularly for searching sections of the recorded picture in which a particular object appears. The present invention also relates to a system for making and recording a database in a recording medium to be used in a system for reproducing a recorded picture.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, a motion picture is recorded on a recording medium and can be reproduced for viewing when a user plays the recording medium. While a user views a motion picture on the recording medium, such as a drama, the user often wants to search scenes or sections in which a particular object or character appears. For example, for a user working on a motion picture scenario, editing, and/or evaluating a character""s acting, it is necessary to search scenes or sections in which a particular character appears.
In the conventional technology, a user must search for the desired scenes or sections by reproducing the whole motion picture file in a play mode in combination with a fast forward/rewind mode. Therefore, the user must often reproduce and view the data recorded on the recording medium from beginning to the end, especially since objects appear in multiple points of the recorded data. Also, if the user is interested in more than one object, too much time and effort may be spent to separately and manually search for the relevant scenes or sections of the recorded data with respect to each object.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to solve at least the problems and disadvantages of the related art.
An object of the present invention is to provide a system for automatically searching a scene or scenes in which a particular object or objects appear in a recorded picture.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system for automatically searching at least one section in which one or more objects successively appears in a recorded picture.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system storing information regarding scenes or sections in which a particular object appears in a recorded picture and/or storing character information to allow an automatic search of scenes or sections in which a particular object appears in a recorded picture based upon the character and section information.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a system for reading section/scene information with respect to each object from a recording medium containing the section/scene information, and for automatically searching and displaying sections/scenes in which the particular object selected by a user appears in a recorded picture.
Additional advantages, objects, and features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned from practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained as particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
To achieve the objects and in accordance with the purposes of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, a system for searching a particular object in a recorded picture comprises a recording medium on which the motion picture is recorded; the recording medium containing object information table and location information indicative of scenes or sections in which a particular object appears; a reproducing mechanism reproducing and displaying the recorded picture, wherein the system automatically searches and displays the scenes or sections in which objects appear based upon the object table and the location information.
The object table is made by searching scenes in which a prominent feature of each object, such as a character""s face, appears in the recorded picture; classifying the scenes into groups by objects; and forming a table of the classified scene groups. A section in which a particular object appears is defined for the particular object if the same object successively appears within at least a predetermined interval. Namely, a particular object is determined to appear in a section when the following conditions are satisfied: the same object successively must appear within at least a predetermined interval; and the color of associated with the object such as the color of clothes of a character must be the same. The location information is the frame information. Moreover, the character table is formed by selecting representative scenes from the scenes of each object as representative scenes and by selecting at least one representative scene with respect to each object.
In an another embodiment of the present invention, a system for searching a particular object in a recorded picture comprises means for reading the location information of each object""s scene in the recorded picture from a recording medium having the information of objects in the form of a table and the location information indicative of scenes that each object appears; and means for reproducing and displaying portions of the recorded picture corresponding to scenes in which an object selected by a user appears based upon the object table information read by the means for reading the information from the recording medium. The scenes in which the selected object appears are displayed using a table of representative scene of objects. The recorded picture may be directly displayed from a representative scene of the selected character. Moreover, the user may skip to each scenes in which a selected object appears in the recorded picture.